Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III EXPANSION OF BROADGATES HALL Abingdon Chambers. Growing in numbers this Hall was enlarged towards the east before 1485 (perhaps during the principalship of Thomas Walton, Vice-Chancellor in 1467) by the annexation of a house belonging to the monks of Abingdon, half a rood in extent, and known as Abmgdon Chambers. When a moiety of the advowson of St. Aldate's was bestowed on the Abbey in the twelfth century, there went with it a piece of land and houses, inside the city, which one may probably identify with this tenement, a few yards only from the church. The story may here be given in Wood's free rendering from the Abingdon Chronicle. The entire benefice of " a certain monastery dedicated to the veneration of Saint Aldad, bishop," "did belong to two clerks of Oxon that were brothers called Robert and Gillbert and a priest named Nicholas, who did divide the profitts annually betweene them (Nicolas having half). But it hapned as God would have it" (I speak with the charter) " that the said two brethren afterwards took upon them a monk's habit in the abbey of Abingdon, when Ingulphus was abbat thereof" Wood's City of Oxford, ed. Clark, Oxf. Hist. Soc. ii. 35. (which was about the year 1130). " Who straightway gave their lands and tenements which came to them by inheritance to the said abbey. " Which Nicholas seing, came to the abbat and covent and required them that they would grant him those two parts, which belonged to Robert and Gilbert, to him, and he would pay them 20. yearly rent—and with this condition that, if he changed his habit or profession, it should be in their covent; or else, if he should dye in that preistly profession that he then was in, why ! then also his part should come to them and soe they should have all the church to themsel...